Your Heart Is Gold
by Quills and Inkwells
Summary: Two-shot. Niklaus Mikaelson and Caroline Forbes. Both were enigmas, warped and twisted into broken people by the ghosts of their pasts. Both believing that they were unworthy of love. They were two people with shattered hearts, and they managed to find each other. Both broken, both healing. Underneath their exteriors, they both had hearts of gold.
1. The Girl With A Beautiful Soul

_(you're beautiful, you're strong, full of light. I enjoy you.)_

* * *

She could never understand why he wanted her.

He considered her worthy of him for some ridiculous reason. There was nothing special about little old her—why on earth would he ever want _her?_ But, at the same time, he seemed to be genuine in his affections. It simply didn't make sense.

She was just Caroline Forbes, former Miss Mystic Falls, neurotic cheerleader and event planner, and all around control freak. She was the little blonde distraction for all of her friends. She was the one that they kept everything a secret from until she was turned into one of them herself. She was the sheltered one—the one who they feared could never keep a secret. She was the shallow one. She would never be enough.

Looking back on it, Caroline knew where her fears of being second best stemmed from. Her father had left her mother when she was eight—for another man, no less—and it had broken her mother terribly. Her mother had buried herself into her work to escape it all, and Caroline was left in the dust. The day her daddy left she became second best to his partner and her mother's work. That was the day that Caroline Forbes, age eight, had to grow up.

When Caroline and her friends had finally gotten to an age where they noticed boys, she was never the first pick. All the boys loved Elena. They never loved _her._ She had tried to catch Stefan's attention before he got to Elena, but that failed. Of course, when she later found out that he only _came_ to school for Elena, it made sense. She had pretty much only been Matt's girlfriend once he finally got over Elena, and even then she was constantly reminded of their history. He had always been happier with Elena than he ever was with her. Technically she had dated Damon before Elena got to him, but that was when he was going through his "Humans Are Walking Food" phase, and that relationship ended really badly. While she had mostly gotten over what he did to her—it was in the past and while she wasn't happy with him and Elena together, she knew that he would never, ever do that to her friend—she didn't like the guy very much. He still rubbed her the wrong way at times. And Tyler… Well, that boy seemed to rate her lower than a wolf pack that "needed his help". As if. Honestly, the boy proclaimed to love her, yet he never seemed to be around. It does take two to work in a relationship.

Yet, even with her string of boyfriends in the past, no man had ever made her feel like Niklaus Mikaelson. And that scared her. She was in no way, shape, form, or fashion good enough for the likes of him. He was the Original Hybrid. He was immortal. He had everything. She was just a baby vampire with a control freak personality from the middle of nowhere.

Before she had turned, all Caroline wanted to do was get out. She wanted to get away from Mystic Falls and see the world. She was a good student, and her grades could get her into a great college. From there she could apply for independent studies abroad and see what was out there. She had never been anywhere, and college was her way out. Too bad Katherine Pierce and a pillow got in the way. She was stuck at eternally seventeen, and she had to get her bloodlust under control, and then there were sacrifices, and werewolves, and a really sexy, immortal, psychopathic Hybrid that had an interest in her.

Getting out of town wasn't really an option when her friends were going through hell at home. She couldn't just _leave_ them, but at the same time, all she wanted to do was just that.

It was one of the reasons that Klaus intrigued her so much. He had promised her the world—Rome, Paris, and Tokyo to start with—and she couldn't help but be interested. To be honest, it was flattering that he was so obvious in his interest in her, but she couldn't go there. She was with Tyler, and he had done horrible things to her friends, and, well, she was with Tyler. Besides, she and him would never work. They were so alike that it simply couldn't. They would fight, and he would get all pissy, and she would freak out, and they would both have some sort of neurotic control freak meltdown and blow each other up. They wouldn't last two seconds as a couple, much less an eternity. (Though she would bet that the makeup sex would be _fantastic_… DAMN IT CAROLINE STOP THINKING ABOUT HIM THAT WAY).

Klaus seemed to get her deepest thoughts and desires in a way that no one else ever had. He knew that—while the circumstances of her turning weren't the best at all—she was happier this way. She was more confident with herself now. She liked that she was strong, fast, and fearless. The inconsequential things that she had obsessed over in her human days still mattered—she would still graduate like a normal person for goodness sake—but they didn't matter nearly as much anymore. She didn't have to prove herself nearly as much as she had to before. The social events of her high school days were all that she had to live for before she turned. They took up her every thought. They were something that was underneath her control. Even when her life was falling apart at the seams, if she could just get that party to turn out as impeccably as she always did, then everything would be okay. Now that she was a vampire, she would have to leave town anyways in a few years, so she didn't really have to worry about being Mystic Falls' resident Disney Princess for the rest of her life. Vampirism was her escape. And Klaus got that.

He understood what it felt like to love being what she was. He embraced it, cherished it, and in a thousand years, Caroline could only hope that she had the same level of control as he. She felt a connection with this thousand year old lonely man, but they were never meant to be. She wasn't the strong, and beautiful, and queenly woman that he seemed to see in her. He loved her light, and yet she felt herself slipping into the darkness. She was a mass murderer. She was brutal, and a monster. She was just what her father had said that she was. "You'll never be okay, because you're a vampire" is what he had said to her. She wasn't okay. She was an abomination, and she was dark. He cherished her light, and he loved her darkness. No, Klaus was much too good for her. She could never be the girl that he thought she was. She would never be that girl, because she never could be.

She just wasn't enough.

* * *

**AN: So here's the first installment of a short and sweet Klaroline piece. I adore these two characters, both individually and together, so it was a fantastic undertaking to write them. As a reminder, a general disclaimer for all of my stories is available on my profile. Anyways, enjoy Niklaus's chapter, and thank you for reading!**


	2. The Man With A Creative Heart

_(anyone who is capable of love is capable of being saved.)_

* * *

He knew that he would never be worthy of her affections.

No matter how hard he pursued her, no matter how much he wooed the marvelous and lovely Caroline Forbes, he would never be good enough for her. She had a beautiful soul. She was full of light, and her smile lit him on fire. She was a marvelous creature, and she belonged with someone that could give her everything that she wanted out of life. She was a rare woman, and she deserved the world. And all he wanted was to lay it at her feet.

He was too dark for her lovely self. He would corrupt her, and change her, and turn her into something that—while still just as marvelous as ever—he feared that she did not wish to be. He had seen her dark side, and she was magnificent in battle. But the last thing that he wished to do was help her become something that she did not wish to be. And, right now, she did not seem to wish to explore the darker aspects of her personality.

He would always be a monster. He had been told that he was one since he was a child. Of all of his siblings, it was he that his father hated. He was the one that drew the ire of the fearsome man the most often, and the one that took the blows the longest. It was a childhood of violence and lacerating words—words that left a mark on his heart.

When they turned, life wasn't easier. The bloodlust was terrible to learn to control. It was a disaster. He and his siblings were still children, learning to navigate the world as demons of the night. For the longest time, it was only he, Elijah, and Rebekah. They were the three that remained.

He daggered his siblings to protect them. He would kill to protect the ones that he loved, and putting his siblings away for a bit to keep them with him was what it took. After they lost Henrik none of the siblings could bear to lose another one of their own. It would kill them all. Kol was either daggered (usually because he had caused some disaster by his reckless behavior), or running around seducing women and making a general fool of himself. He had been let out on occasion over the past few centuries. Finn, the poor fool, had been daggered for nine hundred years. To be honest, Klaus might have forgotten that Finn was still in his coffin for a few hundred years, and by the time that he _did_ remember, it was just easier to keep the guy neutralized where he wouldn't be pestering the rest of them about that redheaded strumpet Sage he had turned. Rebekah, like Kol, had been daggered on-and-off over the centuries. She usually got put away because she fell in love with some pathetic human man and wanted to leave him. He couldn't take someone leaving him again. Elijah, out of all of the siblings, had been daggered the least. Whether he would admit it or not, Klaus needed the counsel of his older brother. He needed Elijah to help him with decisions, or to simply just talk to. Elijah kept him grounded. Even immortal Hybrids needed their older brother.

He had been a terrible person for the past thousand years. He had tormented the people of Mystic Falls, the majority of them close friends to Caroline. It was no wonder that he would never gain her affection. He would move heaven and earth for that girl—that marvelous, wonderful, girl—but he would never be worthy of her.

When he had first taken an interest in her, he had done what he did best—he snooped a bit. And, after delving into her transcripts and pretty much everything he could find on her, Klaus was not surprised at what he found. She was brilliant. Literally brilliant. She had outstanding grades, and near-perfect test scores. She was an immaculate student that had managed to keep a 4.0 GPA while being captain of the cheerleading squad and four other school committees, not to mention that she organized half of the events around the tiny town that she called home. She didn't even know how capable she was, and it was a shame.

She had the makings of a queen. She was worth so much more than what Mystic Falls could offer her. She was worth more than the high-hemmed skirts and low-cut tops that she paraded around in. He knew what a broken person looked like—one that was so starved for love that they would give all that they had to the first person that blinked at them. He knew because he was one. And it broke his heart that the broken look he saw so often in the mirror was visible in her lovely eyes. She had been told time and time again that she was worthless. She had come to believe—and he knew, because he believed it about himself as well—that she was not worth anything. He would spend centuries chipping away at her heart until she believed him when he said that she was worthy of the world. He wanted to rip the throats out of every person that made Caroline Forbes believe that she was not worth waiting eternity for.

But, no matter how much he wanted to cherish the sweet Caroline, he would never get to. He merely was not worth her time. She was kind, compassionate, and so, so, tender. She was brash and loud, controlling, and more than a little bit meddling. She was wonderful, and she deserved someone so much more than him. He would forever be the one that had taken so much from her friends and family. She would look at him forever as the monster that had tortured, and killed, and sacrificed. She would never see him as the man that he really was, no matter what he did to show her the other side of him.

It made no difference. He had grown used to the loneliness. It was not unusual for him to be alone. He had been deserted by everyone that he had come to care about over the centuries. The rejection was normal. It just hurt a bit more, being rejected by the only girl he had come to truly care for in a thousand years. But no matter how much it hurt, Klaus understood. He would not want to be with a monster such as himself, after all. He and Caroline were the same, and it was their similarities that made it impossible for her to ever give him a chance. It was the reason that they were destined to be apart.

He had spent thousands of years, a broken man. And, when he came to the tiny town in Virginia searching for the doppelganger whose blood would give him a family, he met the fast-talking blonde that changed his heart, bit by bit. He was still broken, but so was she, and when they were together he felt a little less shattered. But they were not meant to be. He was a terrible monster, not worth her shining light. He was a dark man, undeserving of love or affection. He wasn't worthy of her.

He was never enough.

* * *

**AN: So, I confess, I was crying while writing this piece. It was just heartbreaking, how these lovely three-dimensional characters believe that they aren't worthy of a fantastic love. I have more pieces coming up for the TVD fandom-a Kalijah piece and a Mikaelson Family piece are already in the works-so keep an eye out for them. The song that inspired this piece was "I Don't Deserve You" by Plumb, so give it a listen! Thank you for reading!**

**-Inky**


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